What is journalism?

That's the question our executive editor just posed to us. He gave us 10 minutes to figure it out. (It's another retreat week for Missourian editors).

For me, journalism is a wide-eyed, multi-personality Jekyll-and-Hyde monster that always needs fed, never sleeps, needs constant oversight and is never satisfied. Neglecting the monster leads to bad things -- wars in Iraq, for instance. Or scandals, like Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass.

When the monster is fed, however, it can lead to positive things. I remember the time in college at UW when we took up the story of a student who got screwed by a local auto shop on car repairs. In the end, he finally got the crooked auto shop to own up to its responsibility for shoddy workmanship.

On a bigger scale, feeding the monster has  taken people down for bad acts (see Nixon, Richard, for instance). Feeding the monster can prevent people from committing bad acts in the first place -- if we didn't cover murder, would there be more? Feeding the monster can enlighten and inform, entertain and empower, shape or re-establish opinion, and help us connect to our world, our communities and to each other.

In essence, journalism is the conduit of so much of the world's communication. Our need to connect, to live, to be human, drives its hunger. It's our job as journalists to nurture it, promote the Jekyll and keep the Hyde under wraps. The last thing we want is for the monster to die.





Technorati Tags: journalism, Missourian, Sherlock, Jake Sherlock

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I wanted a cigarette really bad today.

I didn't have it, though. I quit back on Jan. 8, 2005, and I'm staying quit. Not even one. That's how it starts.

Besides, my wife would kill me. She quit once we found out she was pregnant, but it hasn't been easy for her. Me taking up the habit again would be like pouring salt into an open wound.

It's funny how after all this time the cravings still hit me. Today, it was at the end of a long afternoon at our editors retreat. We had some serious issues to hash out as a group, and the conversation got a little intense at times. It was tiring. And it created a stress headache. The kind of headache that I used to cure with a smoke. I think that's what sparked the nic fit.

It wasn't a physical craving, more of a habitual craving. Of course, the more I write about it, the more I start thinking again how I want one. You'd think these cravings would go away after 2 1/2 years.

But they don't. I remember back when I was going to a support group during the first Shapin' Up project, one of the group leaders told us about the time she had a similar experience to mine after quitting 20 years earlier. Her craving came after she had finished a series of household chores; all of a sudden, the idea of "now I can have a cigarette" popped into her head. Just like that.

It's crazy what nicotine does to a person. Once an addict, always an addict.





Technorati Tags: nicotine, smoking, quitting, Sherlock, Jake Sherlock, fitness, Shapin' Up

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I managed to carve myself out an hour of time this week to attend a webinar on online headline writing. The webinar was through Poynter’s News University, and it offered some really good insights.

Here are some highlights:

With online heads, get the key info in the first 40 characters. This gets you better hits on most search engines.

Write your headlines for people, but keep Google in mind. This is to say that you can be clever, but keep in mind that you don't have a visual, a deck or any other supporting elements to help get your point across (unless of course you design your homepage with all that stuff, but even then that doesn’t help readers who find your stories through a search engine or who subscribe through an RSS feed). Their example: "It's out Friday, and everybody wants one." This worked well in print because they had a picture of an iPhone above the headline. In an RSS feed, it's too vague to catch attention. And with no real keyword in that headline (like “iPhone), there’s a slim chance Google is going to bring it up if you’re searching for a story on iPhones.

Their tips for writing good web heads:
-- Keep it short
-- Be direct and literal
-- Focus on the unique
-- Use useful keywords (if the story is about an iPhone, make sure you use that word, for example)
-- You still can go for heads that tease and amuse, just make sure it's complete and clear

And last but not least (in fact, this was the part that stuck out for me the most):

Write the web headline first, then the print headline. The Web headline requires a more literal approach, which can often help lead copy editors to a better understanding of the story as a whole and help editors find holes in stories they may have otherwise overlooked.



Technorati Tags: headlines, journalism

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